[PoignardAzur]

I strongly disagree with your framing. Yes, policies can have unintended consequences and immigration policy in particular is a minefield of obvious solutions having terrible results... But that's not what we're talking about.

When OP says "I was for wide-scale deportations until I saw people I like being deported", it's not a case of unintended consequences, it's a case of "When I voted for the leopard party I didn't think the leopards would eat the faces of people I like!"

Unintended consequences means things like "criminality increased because immigrant communities lost trust in the police".

But come on. "Families swept into jails, plain-clothes officers ambushing people on their way to work or school" is how deportations work. Being surprised by that is like being surprised that the death penalty means people get executed.

This isn't a failure of epistemology, it's a failure of empathy. OP just didn't think that the people getting deported would turn out to be people with moral value.

[JumpCrisscross]

> When I voted for the leopard party I didn't think the leopards would eat the faces of people I like

This isn't a good-faith interpretation of their comment.

There are plenty of illegal immigrants with a criminal record. Trump's pitch was to deport them. There was also a pitch that strongly hinted at deporting basically anyone who isn't white, and I think this appealed to the racist fifth of Americans [1], but plenty of people were messaged the first part with the second being segregated to rallies, NewsMax, Twitter, et cetera.

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/poll-finds-suppo...

[PoignardAzur]

> There are plenty of illegal immigrants with a criminal record.

Assuming that all the people who will be negatively impacted by a blanket policy will be criminals is also a failure of empathy.

Trump explicitly, repeatedly said he would deport all undocumented immigrants. That explicitly means migrants without a criminal record. Yes, he sometimes claimed that most of them were bad or criminals or eating pets, but believing that isn't a failure of epistemology! Trump didn't craft some deviously clever lie here, he just said a bunch of bullshit and people bought it because they needed a bogeyman.

As sibling comments point out, the reason these "Oh, we didn't know!" excuses from Trump voters ring hollow is that given a choice, they'd still vote for him today. They'll still vote Republican next election, the primaries will still pick the most Trump-like candidate for the party. Nothing was learned.

Because learning anything would require admitting that, yes, Trump's lies were extremely easy to see through, yes, any blanket measures against immigrants will also hurt the "good ones", and yes, Trump voters are morally responsible for the things Trump does.

[eptcyka]

Presumably, to have a criminal record, the authorities would have to apprehend the individual in question. Why wouldn’t the individual be deported then and there, if they immigrated illegally?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why wouldn’t the individual be deported then and there, if they immigrated illegally?

Because enforcing immigration policy isn’t the job of local and state police. It can be, if they choose it to be. But many haven’t for a variety of reasons ranging from moral opposition to not giving a fuck.

[s1artibartfast]

Because that is not how the US criminal system operates. Being apprehended for a crime does not automatically trigger deportation. It requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take an interest and additional action.

Furthermore, there are entire states (like Colorado) which refuse, by law, to cooperate with ICE and hold people for ICE to pick up, even when ICE has decided to step in and deport them.

[ripe]

> There are plenty of illegal immigrants with a criminal record.

I keep hearing this claim, but was there ever any proof of it?

To be precise: is there any reason why criminals cannot be caught without hunting for immigrants to deport?